While I was leafing through one of the big magazines, my eye fell on a picture of a boy made to stand against the wall, his face turned toward his parents in anger, and beneath the picture, between parentheses, was written: "The bad boy comes from a bad family" — the boy meaning by his words that the fault was his parents' fault if he went wrong in his conduct.
This vivid picture brought back to my mind an idea I had once heard from a great educator, the gist of which is that if, every time we found need for punishment, we searched for the original cause of the offense committed, we would find that we ought to punish ourselves instead of our children. Does this saying not apply to the sentence that boy repeated in his hour of anger?
There is no doubt that every parent is pained by the memory of punishments he ordered that were not well judged. Incidents like these leave not only a painful trace with the parents, but many traces in the souls of the children; for they too, despite their young age, realize very well that the punishments were not in their proper place, and so a resentment against their parents grows up in them which greatly affects their feelings and their future conduct.
One day, on my way to the college, I passed a mother sitting with her boy on the balcony of the house, trying to feed him a dish and striking him every time he refused a mouthful. I approached her and asked her the reason for his refusing the food, and she answered in a low voice which he no doubt heard: "I hate this dish, but he has to get used to it." So I asked her again: "Have you ever mentioned in front of him that you hate it?" And she answered, having felt her mistake: "That may be so." And she stopped striking him, realizing that she was the guilty one.
This is one example among many that shows us the extent of the mistakes which we ourselves commit and then punish our children for, if they take after us. If we admitted that a child's conduct is nothing but a collection of habits formed in his early years — some of them trained into him intentionally or unintentionally, and some acquired from his companions — we would realize that the word of the great educator, which asks that the punishment fall on the parents, holds great wisdom.
Parents themselves often fall into errors which produce strange behavior in their children — behavior that, in their view, calls for punishment and severity, so they lay on the punishments
with education as their aim, without searching for the cause of that objectionable behavior. If they searched first, they would find that it goes back either to a deficiency in their education of their children, or to some crookedness in their dealings with them, or to some other error they committed in ignorance of its consequences. Parents must therefore avoid these errors if they aim at the good and best upbringing, because punishments that are ill judged or excessive in severity often bring the opposite of the benefit sought: the child's waywardness increases, his conduct grows unruly, and his upbringing is spoiled. Here is an indication of some of those familiar errors:
First — the parents' feeling that they are responsible for everything their child does. This feeling breeds in them an anxious state of mind that prevents natural behavior, and creates a heavy atmosphere between them and their children which presses on the nerves of both parties.
Second — the parents' failure to realize what their child can do at a given age, so that they either ask of him tasks beyond his capacity or deprive him of tasks he could well perform. Both cases invite punishments there would be no need of, had they realized the truth of his capability.
Third — the family's attempt to change their child's personality into what they themselves desire, instead of accepting him as he is by nature. An attempt like this alters the course of his natural growth and breeds in his soul a feeling of inferiority that makes him lose his social balance, so that his nerves grow tense and his faults multiply.
Fourth — turning the child's attention upon himself is an error whose consequences are beyond counting: it makes the child difficult in temper, over-sensitive and over-alert to everything said of him, whether thanks or blame, and drives him to strange behavior with the aim of drawing attention whenever attention turns away from him, whatever that strange behavior may cost him in scoldings or punishments.
Fifth — opening numerous possibilities before children without training them in choice, and the parents' fear of refusing any request of their children's. This fear becomes a weapon in the child's hand which he uses to lead his parent on to permitting him things harmful to him; and choice without training or knowledge brings unwelcome results.
Sixth — the aimless, muddled upbringing that permits a thing at one time and punishes for it at